On Entropy and Ecstasy in the New Year

On Entropy and Ecstasy in the New Year -- Chris Lydon offers up the best of year-end reviews I've read this week, tapping, as he often does, Emerson...

Speaking of ecstasy: still and always I hear Ralph Waldo Emerson, first and best among American public thinkers, affirming us bloggers: "Live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind," Emerson wrote (in 1837). "For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destrying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard."

And as for the presidential campaign in the year to come, and the Internet's real debut in it, Emerson again has the gravest warning and the most consoling affirmation I know--all tucked into the conclusion of his essay (1850) on "Montaigne; Or, The Skeptic":

"Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general aims are somehow answered. We see, now, events forced on, which seem to retard or retrograde the civility of ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his finger at laws: and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams."

So here is a cheerful New Year's Eve bet on the world-spirit...

Go read the whole thing, and have a happy new year.